This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 8: “Christ-Shaped Lives and Spirit-Inspired Speech”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- Again, the lesson attempts to instruct members to live and speak positively without understanding being born again.
- The lesson’s author seems not to understand that behavior cannot be changed in a lasting way unless one is made spiritually alive.
- The Teachers Comments make much of “contextualization” in incorporating Christian principles in missiology.
The lesson opens with reference to Ephesians 4:17–24. The commentary assumes that the “gentile lifestyle” of which Paul speaks is a pattern of behavior which drives people in a “coward trajectory of living in the grip of sin.” What the author utterly misses is that the contrast between the “gentile lifestyle” and a Christian lifestyle is not behavior, although that may be the outward manifestation. The real difference is spiritual death or life.
In order to get a better picture of the Adventist misinterpretation, here is Ephesians 4:17–24:
So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in [the likeness of] God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
Paul is exhorting BELIEVERS—people who have trusted in Jesus’ finished work and have been born again and passed out of death into life (Jn 5:24) to lay aside their old lives and to put on their new lives. This process is possible only when a person has been born again; without spiritual life, a person has no ability to put off the old life.
Determined discipline and a process of behavior modification will not change a person or make him or her act “Christian”. Only being indwelled by the Living Lord will change a person. In fact, such a change makes self-indulgence uncomfortable to a person.
The passage above is not possible to understand let alone practice unless one has already repented of one’s sin and depravity and trusted Jesus’ shed blood and His resurrection as the propitiation for one’s sin.
The real issue is this: Have you trusted Jesus? Have you acknowledged your sin and your inability to become better? Have you trusted in Jesus’ blood alone?
This lesson camps on Christian behavior. It reminds readers to speak truth, to foster peace, to clean up one’s words, to be kind and not bitter—all of which are good advice. But good advice will not change a person. Only trust in Jesus and being willing to let go of all one loves to trust and follow Him will change us.
The Teachers’ Comments focus on incorporating Adventist values into the cultural perspectives of missions. It quotes a 1992 Ministry magazine article by Borge Schantz, “a celebrated Seventh-day
Adventist missiologist, [who] proposed three guiding principles of contextualization for the Seventh-day Adventist approach to cross-cultural mission”. Here are the three points:
First, the cross-cultural missionary must correctly understand the biblical stories and teachings in their original context.
Second, the cross-cultural missionary must accurately distinguish between universal biblical teachings and their principles and his or her own cultural values and experience. Though these customs must be, or may be, contextualized, biblical principles, such as the Sabbath, cannot be compromised.
Third, the cross-cultural missionary must develop a genuine and profound interest in, and understanding of, the culture of the people whom he or she serves.
This list reveals that Adventism completely misunderstands the gospel. Notice, for instance their one example of a biblical principle which must not be compromised: the Sabbath. In other words, Adventists are to adjust their unique teachings to fit the context of the culture where they are proselytizing. The Adventist non-negotiable, however, cannot be morphed to fit.
The biblical gospel is designed to fit any culture. Of course, it will be incompatible with evil and with evil practices, but the gospel itself is the truth that changes people’s hearts. It is what leads them to trust Jesus and His sacrifice and to be born again.
Adventism, however, may be at cultural odds with other environments. The lesson advocates that Adventists need to contextualize “biblical teachings” to fit the culture where they are working. Distinctives such as the Sabbath, though, will set people apart from their cultures. Yet they see these distinctive as necessary while adapting others.
What they will not do is to introduce people to the biblical Jesus who could not fail, who was fully God possessed of all the attributes of God, but instead they adapt what they consider “the optional variables of Western culture” to the local ways.
They pick on the wrong things to make a hard stance. Yet this misguided choice of Sabbath and Adventist distinctives is typical.
This lesson, in short, misses the essence of Ephesians 4 and instead addresses behavior modification for enhancing unity. Behavior, though, will never yield true unity. Only trusting the Lord Jesus will make one a true believer and truly a member of the body of Christ.
Again, this lesson misses the mark and focusses on moral teachings—teachings which will never yield a changed life. †
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